Baltasar Garzón and Wikileaks are considering demanding Google for sending confidential digital information to the USA.

It concerns details on three European journalists.

Jan 27, 2015 - 12:33 PM

The judicial team of Wikileaks, led by the ex National Court judge, Baltasar Garzón, are studying taking legal action against Google for having given the United States authorities digital information on web journalists; they sent complete details on three journalists.

Garzón made the announcement yesterday in a press conference in Geneva, where he spoke about the personal and judicial situation of the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and all the people who work on the web portal who have been responsible for the leaking of thousands of United States secret documents.

Garzón explained last December 23 he discovered Google had transmitted to the United States authorities all the digital information they had on three journalists, Britons Sarah Harrison and Joseph Farell and the Islander Kristinn Hrfafnsson.

‘The obtaining of this information is totally arbitrary and illicit, the illegal obtaining of these documents could impugn all procedure’, said Garzón, who said the least Google could have done is to inform the three journalists that the United States wanted the information on them.

‘The generality with which they ask for all these documents is unacceptable and contradicts even the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution. Google should have opposed this exorbitant reclamation. Once we discover they did not oppose, we could open legal action against Google and the prosecutor who requested the information’.

The ex-judge said it was not clear of any legal action would be civil or penal ‘but what is clear is there has been clear prejudice not only against the journalists but also third parties which have nothing to do with the process.

Regarding the leader of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012, and who is accused of four sexual crimes against two women, which he denies, his lawyer, Melinda Taylor, pointed out he had spent more time confined in the embassy than he would have spent in prison in the case of being judged guilty.

‘Four years have passed and there is not a single charge against Assange, and certainly, he has always been at the disposition of the Swedish judiciary to defend against what he is accused. We cannot understand why his interrogation has not been carried out in the embassy itself, as happens in 100% of the cases of international cooperation’, questioned Garzón.

Garzón considers Assange is currently submitted to a poorer lifestyle than in prison, as he has no right to leave or go to hospital because of the risk of being detained by the British authorities.

‘It is unheard of in the XXI century; the right to asylum is not being respected. You can’t ask a person to renounce his fundamental rights, such as the right to political asylum’.

Assange was detained in London in December 2010, and then began a long judicial process in the United Kingdom, which ending when the High Court rejected, two years ago, his last appeal and authorised his extradition to Sweden.

He took refuge in the embassy knowing that Great Britain would send him to Sweden and they would send him to the United States ‘where he would be submitted to an unjust case of possible ill treatment, as Chelsea Manning’ said the lawyer, in reference to the soldier who gave Wikileaks classified documents.